The name NeuroPub

What is the idea behind the name NeuroPub? It's a play with words. Just like PubMed refers to a database with medical publications, NeuroPub refers to a Neuroimaging viewer for your published results. Since iPad is such a great ebook reader, NeuroPub on iPad is like having your own interactive publications in the palm of your hand.

I have the 64 GB iPad. A 32-bit float image is about 2 MB in size (2x2x2 mm resolution). This means 1 GB can hold roughly 500 different statistical parametric maps and I could fill the iPad with 30000 images in whole! If I go up in resolution to 1x1x1 mm, this number obviously needs to be divided by 8, which still leaves us with an impressing number of 3750 images.

I doubt anyone will actually have so many statistical images, so the NeuroPub app will easily store all your current and future results which you can always carry with you on your iPad or iPhone at conferences, meetings, etc.

First version only for iPad

The first version of NeuroPub will only be available for iPad. This is because the iPhone version depends on iPhoneOS 4. However, I plan to release the iPhone version as soon as possible. It will be released as a universal app.

It's just a few days left before I go to Barcelona and I have to get the poster ready in good time. I need some good screenshots from the viewer, but I still have some work to do. Take a look at the screenshot below:

The idea is to have a 2x2 view, where the brain is visualised in axial, coronal, sagittal, and 3D. The viewer will come with the MNI standard brain in 2x2x2 resolution, so the requirement is that all the images that you want to view are in exactly the same field of view and resolution as the standard brain.

The images will be transferred through Apple's file sharing procedures, where you connect your iPad to iTunes and add your images to the NeuroPub app in iTunes. The viewer will only support the Nifti format, so any other image format (MINC, Analyze, etc) will have to be converted first.

More screenshots coming up soon. :)

NeuroPub - a Brain Visualisation Tool for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch

That is the name of my poster that will be presented at HBM 2010 (the 16th Annual Meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping). The conference is in Barcelona this year, and it's only eight days left before the conference starts. My plan was to have the app released on the App Store in time for the conference, but I don't think it will get approved in time. It doesn't matter too much. It's more important that I have a great app that I can demonstrate on my iPad. I also need to prepare and print the poster, which I will present on Thursday June 10.

What is NeuroPub about? Statistical Parametric Maps for functional and structural images are often located in the same stereotaxic space - the ICBM152 space. This means results from different experiments can be visualised and compared on the same standard brain. The idea with NeuroPub is to create a tool which can be used as a library for all your statistical images - browse, search and visualise. With the advent of powerful mobile devices, such as the iPhone and the iPad, it's now possible to create this tool for iPhone OS - and store all your statistical images in your pocket! It will be a valuable tool whenever you want to discuss your results with other researchers, for instance at meetings such as the HBM conference.